PC Dtg - Not Fixing Stuff Is Costing You Money

Well I just refunded Rapid Transit and Harlem Line after buying in the sale (on top of BCC a few days ago). You really need to start fixing the issues that plague these older routes as there is still a market for them albeit at a discount price, but only if they actually offer quality product.

Rapid Transit - The Class 1442 continues to have virtually no audible traction or track sound in the cab. Unlike some of the German stock you cannot run with the doors open to try and enhance things. What track sound there is, comes across as tinny, like it was sampled running an OO model over some Peco Streamline points. The Class 1442 also has a traction lock issue if you resume a saved game. The 1442 horn sounds exceptionally weedy and has about a 2 second loop.

Harlem Line - Third Journey scenario in I hit a red light bug. What is the point of a "Journey" that can't be completed? Without a mod this is another route that has virtually no track sound, what there is again comes through as very tinny. The M3 with the obstacle deflector (pilot) cutting into the top of the railhead has never been fixed.

Those are just two examples of routes with long standing issues that you must be aware of but simply neglect. There are many, many others. We have the unfinished scenery on BML (and BCC), the very broken SoS, various Journey scenarios across different routes and traction that cannot be completed. These two particular instances have just lost you £26 in revenue (and earned me a Steam yellow card refund warning) but it's worth it not to pay for inferior product.

 

I always wonder how many routes you have mate as I swear you refund everything

 

If the quality would be consistent and the core issues fixed i would probably own every DLC and would not always wait for 50-80% sales to buy them. So yeah, terrible QA is costing DTG money. Especially the older DLC have often embarrassing quality.

Sounds are such a major problem, especially all the missing sound and I dont know another game/simulator with such massive sound issues...

 

Well done OV glad you were able to get a refund. I agree we pay far too much for inferior products and the price in future should reflect the quality.

 

I own most of them and strange though it might seem to hear me admit it, IOW 2022 which I bought with quite low expectations am quite enjoying. I also rebought WCL, mainly to thrash the classic diesels.

On a Rivet roll it seems, who knows once the refund clears might give Arosa another try. (And/or Sursee)

But I should have heeded the warnings about Harlem and of course not really expected anything to have been done to remedy RT.

In fact the only routes I haven't got other than RT and Harlem are:
TGV Avignon
Arosa*
HSC
Hamburg to Lubeck
LIRR (known to be pants)
Luzern to Sursee*
BCC
and the original IOW.

 

I think I’m in the minority, but I’ve always enjoyed Arosa and IoW 1.0.
Arosa is just a very different feel to what’s already out there.
IoW is just a pleasant little run when I don’t have a lot of time to drive a train that day.

 

Strange, you own that much DLC! Considering you always say you’re never buying another piece of DLC!

I remember with the announcement of Cross City, you were definitely not buying it, definitely not spending £30. Then you bought it, but said you definitely weren’t refunding it but did anyway!

Nevermind, eh? That will show DTG

 

Horseshoe ain't actually bad . If you aren't going to get hung up on sounds there's some decent runs up the line with a lot of traffic about. Some of it is quite cool, like a race, you can parallel other services over the pass

 

Of the routes you don't have, OldVern, the one I would recommend is HSC, which I bought when it launched. I just recently started to run it and I'm very pleasantly surprised at how much I'm enjoying it. I think it's SHG's best work to date.

Like most TSW routes, it needs more locos and rolling stock.
In that area it cannot match the TSC version, but it's still a fun route, if of course you enjoy American freight.

It's only 20% off, compared with 40% for many others, which might mean it's selling pretty well.

 

It could also just mean it's too new to discount lower, mind you it was the third to last route for TSW2.

 

And there are good sound mods for the ES44. Yes, HSC is a lot of fun: much traffic, and that downgrade is FUN(?) with a 12,000 ton coal train. I held off for a long time because of the bad reviews, but they seem to have been overstated.

(Also, this is perhaps the best iteration of the GP38 in TSW)

 

I'm still kinda annoyed with the state that spirit of stream has been left in, which has only gotten worst since TSW3. As something which was stated to be a major release and labor of love Its just been left with no real improvements. I know Matt said recently some updates are planned but I'm guessing they just going to be some physics changes since TSW3 released but this route needs more work.

 

part of me thinks that might be a dormant venture for a while. It’s proof of concept but I think it needs some hours on it still

 

Acc to a stream, work is still going on quietly on manual firing

 

Problem is, the whole steam physics are broken. You just don't run a steam loco at 5% cutoff especially at low speed and putting a bit of regulator on doesn't drain the boiler pressure that quickly. And that aside, despite the cause of the abrupt SPAD terminations having apparently been found, that's all gone quiet too.

Never said that. I like TSW and most of the routes, was seduced by Harlem after watching a YT review when I should have been playing closer attention to the broader comments being made about the route. For BCC, I am watching closely as to any bug or QA fixes and maybe a discount next year, at which point it will probably rejoin my collection. Likewise the new German routes, Niddertalbahn almost certainly a Day 1 purchase as will be the route TSG are rumoured to be doing.

Could well be where my money gets diverted to next.

 

I'm full on gutted about this. 5 years of waiting for kettles and this mess is what they put out. 5 months on and it's still broken in numerous ways and nothing on the road map to say they even care about fixing it. And that's just it's basic functionality, before we even get to the dead timetable due to lack of rolling stock.

I'm doing better than you though Vern, DTG have had £8.50 out of me (for the TSW2 base pack) and it will stay that way until SoS is worth buying.

 

I'm afraid all these issues will stay with us as long as TSW original code is alive. The very ancient beginning of this game is the UE lerning time for DTG and some problems are non-resolveable without reinventing major concepts like the way dependencies work etc. I pray for a new game, on a new engine, eg UE5. Preservation no more. BR o7

 

I think the greatest potential of TSW - the growing interacting collection - is, to an extent, its biggest problem. Many new routes depend on older content, yet that content is left unfixed. And more and more copies of it spawn with various qualities. Br 182s are now in 3 different versions, all different, all mostly bad. Even Dispolok 182 was made as an "upgrade" of the ancient RT 182 and is held back by it in all aspects with some plasters put over them. Vice versa, the DRA Br 442 is a completely different story from that from RT. You buy RT in a sale now for a three-month-old game and end up with a way worse Br (1)442. I've mentioned this many times, but every piece of rolling stock should have a core-based "frame" that gets updated with all the new features, and those then project to all its copies. If there's a difference between the two versions in performance (e.g., ES44C4 vs. AC), that is then a relatively small thing to change individually. The game would greatly benefit from having one big library of vehicles in the core, which would then appear where needed in the appropriate configuration. And since all vehicles of the same type would come from the same frame, substitution could be easier where needed (e.g., freight cars).

HSC has been mentioned here - while it is relatively good, it could already benefit from progress made on CJP ES44 (namely sounds and dynamic brake behavior).

Having all vehicles on a per-route basis has to be such a pain. If you find an error in the RT 182 now, chances are it is also is MRCE and Dispo version, and you need to fix three different locos now.

 

Think it's becoming evident SoS was a vanity project to appease the boss. The fact it's taking so long to come out with any fixes tells me either not much work is being done on it, or 2. The whole thing is so badly broken they are having to rebuild from scratch which then begs the question why it was sold like that in the first place and made a centrepiece of TSW3.

Still maintain they should have started more modestly. The man/woman hours that went into making Crewe to Liverpool could have given us a decent section of the Somerset & Dorset, or a nice GWR branch/secondary line. Oxford to Fairford or the Riviera Line down to Kingswear would have been far more suitable for a first, now it seems the only, steam era route.

 

It is probably worth mentioning the absolute irony of them releasing a new SoS trailer yesterday with all the great reviews...

(Train Sim World 3: Spirit of Steam Winter Accolades - YouTube)

 

Yes I saw that and had to stifle a snort or three. The marketing men really are running this now, even if they are trying to pass off a Lada as a BMW!

 

Is DTG gone? They stopped commenting on the forum

 

Uninstalled again and probably for good now.

Between the bugs and the lack of BR style content it just gets very dull driving on greens on many routes, dynamic weather was a step in the right direction but lack of a dispatcher/signaller that can re platform trains the script gets very predictable. That's not a simulation of how a railway works in reality.

I have uninstalled before and come back but I feel now its heading to be TOCsim empty world where you can enjoy being the only train in some of the UKs busiest railway stations. We should be doing better in 2022.

 

SimRail early access is comming, 27.11. Some competition could be a true bless for TSW. BR o7

 

There were always other train sims. I doubt this will change the "quality" of TSW products in any way.

 

You've managed to summarised TSW as a game in two sentences, I'm fully agree with you here

It's a good game for a casual player, that wants to run a train here and there once or twice a week. Then he/she will not be bothered by lack of AI trains density and green lights festival, will not spot sounds issues (simply becasue not being aware how that trains sounds in reality). But if you start to play it more often, then you'll probably pretty fast realize that 9 out of 10 services are always the same - running from A to B on an "auto-pilot', green lights all the way, in case of some routes through deserted tracks.

So if you'll treat it as a simple, casual train simulator, you should be pretty fond about it. Otherwise, you'll probably end up disappointed sooner or later.

 

Don't understand that either. There's not much going on in the terms of fixing SoS since release, right now it looks more like a dropped project. Why did they made it as a starter pack with TSW3 while it is infested with random SPAD issue?

 

For me, it is a train experience, where I can meet trains. Some DLCs are better (& well-populated) than others, eg DRA. I play TS, TSW, Run8, Zusi, HMM and I have to say, TSW is in my opinion the best train game, but not the best simulator overall. Definitely, I am not disappointed, after ~ 2k hours in Angry, sometimes, perhaps.

 

Sure there are, but any of them is more advanced in terms of both graphic and train/railway simulation than TSW?

 

I genuinely believe Harlem line is one of the best routes in TSW3. I've had a lot of fun with it. Refunding it just because one service doesn't work seems a bit premature. I'd love for someone to tell me all the problems this route apparently has, because in all my many happy hours playing it since release I can't remember encountering any major problems.

 

Exactly. Maybe if Microsoft would go with another instance of it's Train Simulator, it would overcome TSW in terms of train simulation, but right now I think there is no other product from the competition that would be better than TSW in regards to all the known limits and issues that it has.

 

I like to follow the Journey experience and if it falls flat on its face on the third element that is a huge downer for me. So back to my original point, if they fix it I'll buy again but it's a fair assumption that won't be the only run plagued with red light issues. I can live with the M3 pilot scraping the railhead but not being able to finish a run.

 

Thanks for responding Alex. And yes the physics are the main issue but the spurious SPADs are not far behind. As I said earlier, if it is taking this long to fix it doesn't say much for the state in which it was put out.

Does that include finishing off Reigate and inserting the missing track section at Redhill?

That still leaves all the other routes and traction packs with broken elements, the Class 20 (Chopper and Change), the G6 Journey scenario, the issues with the two routes I refunded. Even BCC has come out with loads of faults, no fencing alongside the canal section, the gap in the canal with one tile higher than the other and the missing track (again) at Blackwell. I spotted these on one run through so what on earth are your route builders and testers playing at?

What's needed is 1. Better QA and signing off before deciding something is ready for release and 2. People working on fixes ASAP.

 

Don't forget NEC signaling. Acela is probably coming soon and the route is still in shambles when it comes to driving with safety systems. More than a year after release...

 

I think the problem here is dtg keep rolling out new dlc before fixing previous stuff! A dlc launches with problems and before dtg fixes it they launch a new dlc with new problems! Then there priority system is totally flawed, we have old routes with low or medium priority fixes that get put on hold when they release a new route that has high priority problems! Then it takes months to fix the high priority issues and the low medium priority issues remain unfixed. Dtg have so many problems right now I don't think they even know where they are at. Forget nanny 911 we need dtg 911. Somebody needs to go into the dtg studio and restore order and iron out the chaos.

I think from a customers point of veiw it's best to not expect any fixes for the old routes now. Dtg are never gonna have the time to fix them, not with all the problems they got with new dlc releases.

 

Then they should stop selling routes which are broken, Id class the baby bullet, RT & BR182 (RT) as all DLC which are 50% or more broken. Yet still on sale, imagine being new to TSW3 and after playing SKW saw RT & the 182 in a sale and on purchase finding you cant even drive the cab car and its impossible to have safety systems on and keep to time or that the talent is hauling a dead trainset behind it so stuggling for speed. Is that going to make them want to spend more money on other routes?

 

Realistically they can't afford to anymore. There's so many problems, if they stopped rolling out new dlc to fix old problems, they would be broke by the time they fixed everything.

 

Some of the issues are bigger, long term issues. At the same time, I feel like it shouldn't have been released in that state. I want services and scenarios and tutorials to be completable and playable. Other issues I can live with. At the end of the day, I want to be able to play the dlc I get.

 

There should be like a big disclaimer saying that rapid transit doesn't work lol

 

I think the game being called prototype is the disclaimer.

 

Sounds like a piracy. Not fair in my opinion.

 

Doesn't sound like piracy, it is straight up piracy.

Or you can just call it plain old theft.

 

for me it is a bug.
Donwload the game illegally in torrent for example or steal the game in a shop is "piracy"

 

It is not bug. [removed - JD]. For my part, I urge everyone to pay for goods and services. BR at 7

 

If it was a bug you wouldn't have to save it somewhere to stop steam deleting it on refunding..

It's no different to any other method of illegally obtaining software, but if that helps you sleep at night continue telling yourself that

 

you don't need to save it anywhere.
The content ist not deleted from the hard drive so for me it is a bug from Steam.
It's an old bug since TS which never been fixed.

On other games like assetto corsa or any other racing games, the content is deleted from the computer and the game makes a security check with the content you purchased.

[Removed - Alex - Defamation]

 

For me it is really simple. Everything DTG releases for TSW i view as a "Early Access" kind of Alpha version and i know there will be tons of bugs and issues. Thats why I only buy their stuff during big sales and hope it gets improved to "Beta" status at least. Anyway, extremely frustrating experience that I never had with anothor developer and game...

 

Strange, on the odd occassion Ive refunded, steam has always deleted the file from my system as I would expect.